Somali Al-Qaeda affiliate opens new Twitter account

London, Feb 5 (ANI): Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked terror group al-Shabab group has opened a new Twitter account in English.

A senior al-Shabab official said that the new account, which was made in less than two weeks after its previous account was suspended, was genuine

Al-Shabab's previous English-language account was suspended after it used it to announce it would kill a French hostage and then said it had done so, the BBc reports.

According to the report, one of the message on the new account reads: "For what it's worth, shooting the messenger and suppressing the truth by silencing your opponents isn't quite the way to win the war of ideas."

While the main Twitter account, which used to publish in several languages, had been blocked, a separate feed in Arabic continued to operate.

The new al-Shabab account has 280 followers, compared to the previous account, which had more than 20,000 followers, the report said. (ANI)